Congress Working Committee puts off party president's poll to June 2021 amid protests

NEW DELHI: Braving protest from a section of its leadership, the Congress Working Committee meeting on Friday decided to put off the election of the party chief to June, citing preoccupation with the campaign for the April-May Assembly elections in four states and one union territory.

“There will be an elected Congress president in June,”AICC General Secretary organisation KC Venugopal said at a press conference after the CWC meeting. Rahul Gandhi, who quit as party chief after the party's debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, is widely expected to be seeking a second tenure as party chief.

The CWC decision meant two immediate things: the assurance given last August on holding the poll “within six months” is amended; and Sonia Gandhi’s tenure as interim president gets extended by six more months.


Sources said a heated argument took place at the CWC meeting over the timing of the organisational polls. Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Mukul Wasnik - part of the 23 letter-writers who had sought polls and functional reforms - and P Chidambaram demanded immediate elections saying the time had come for the party to change its old style of functioning.

With the change-seekers already a minority in the hand-picked CWC, leaders such as Ashok Gehlot, AK Antony, Oommen Chandy, Ambika Soni, Taroq Anwar among others came out in defence of the Gandhis-led party establishment. They said focussing on the upcoming Assembly elections and ongoing farmers agitation were more important, and that those who kept demanding early organisational polls were only causing distraction. Gehlot even asked why they were getting so worked up with the timing of election of the Congress president "when nobody was asking “how Amit shah and Nadda were elected as BJP chiefs”.

Rahul Gandhi intervened to tactically play the ‘disinterested party’ saying “let us get over with this", even as he stressed the need for the party to stand by agitating farmers.

The CWC also passed resolutions seeking a JPC probe into the controversy involving the purported Whatsapp chats of Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami and on holding agitational programmes on farmers issue.